15 Best “Must Have” Android Apps For 2018 To Get The Most Out Of Your Smartphone

April 24, 2018

It has been 10 years since the Android operating system was first ousted by Google, and back then it was hard to imagine the sheer number of apps we have today. Android’s biggest strength is its app ecosystem. The number of apps in Google Play Store has grown to around 3.5 million by December 2017. There are apps for everything, and most of them are completely free, meaning you’re just a few downloads away from supercharging your Smartphone at no extra cost. Some of them cost money and some of them don’t. Usually, the best apps will cost you a few bucks.

There are multiple apps with the same functionalities. So, instead of trying all of them, we have saved you some time by compiling a list of free and best Android apps. We’ve listed our picks for the best Android apps, shaping our strong selection down to a paltry 20. Some are new, and others have been standbys on this list for years. Regardless, we’re certain that any and all of these apps will make your life easier, and help you get the most out of your Android device.

These are also some of the essential Android apps that you should have on your device in 2018.

Nova Launcher is one of the great and elegant launchers for the modern Android users. It has been on Play Store for many years now. Despite the scores of launchers have risen and fallen earlier, Nova Launcher is still at the front of the pack that lets its users customize aspects of their home screen, icons, and folders.

Nova Launcher replaces the home screen and app drawer, the scrolling list of app icons is normally accessible by swiping up on your phone’s home screen. But on the default settings, you will not be able to notice much in the way of change because Nova Launcher sticks to a fairly take on Android’s home screen. But there is a lot Nova Launcher can do that is not immediately obvious.

Nova Launcher combines versatility with elegance to offer a different home screen full of new possibilities. A real treasure for lovers of Android customization. The makers of Nova Launcher will never rest on its laurels, but continuously add new features, such as Sesame Shortcuts, animations, and Oreo improvements. It is free to download, but its prime version unlocks a lot of other features including some locked gestures.

Evernote is an app designed for note taking, organizing, tasks lists, and archiving. The app allows users to create notes which can be a piece of formatted text, a webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten ‘ink’ note. Notes can also have file attachments. Notes can be sorted into a notebook, tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched, and exported.

It is one tool you need to keep yourself organized in today’s hectic life. It syncs across all your devices to facilitate workflow. However, notes stored on Evernote servers are not encrypted. Evernote is free to use with monthly usage limits and offers paid plans for expanded or lifted limits. Basic customers can upload 60 MB of data each month. Plus customers get a 1 GB upload limit, offline notes on mobile devices, as well as passcode lock for mobile devices. Emails can also be sent to their Evernote account.

Premium subscribers are granted 10 GB of newly uploaded data every month, faster word recognition in images, heightened security, PDF annotation, Context, where notes and news articles can be seen, which are related to the open note and the ability to search text within PDF documents.

WPS Office is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, Linux, iOS and Android OS. WPS Office is a suite of software which is made up of three primary components: WPS Writer, WPS Presentation, and WPS Spreadsheet. It is fully compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and integrates PDF, presentations, spreadsheets, memo, Google docs, etc.

The aim of WPS Office is to provide you a one-stop working solution. Various of office tools and unique and intuitive UI design ensures you enjoy the best mobile office experience. You could easy to do all office word processing on-the-go on phone, tablet and other portable devices. WPS Office allows you can create, view, edit and share office word documents and homework as handy as you need while out of office, in class, traveling, before bedtime or whenever and wherever you want.

Xender is one of the best apps that allows you to connect two or more smartphones to share photos, applications, and other media. No cables, no internet, no data usage! You can transfer files to friends anywhere and anytime. It saves you from the hassle of carrying your USB data cable around to exchange files with PC as no PC side software is required to transmit or receive files.

Moreover, it is a hundred times faster than Bluetooth for transferring files between any device, thanks to it being cross-platform. Xender is a brilliant file-transfer tool that stands out for its user-friendly interface. In addition, you can send files to up to five different devices simultaneously.

This video player for Android supports almost all the primary video and audio file formats, including AC-3, MP3, AAC etc. It is the first Android video player which supports multi-core decoding. Test result proved that dual-core device’s performance is up to 70% better than single-core devices.

It packs a lot of features including editing of subtitle timeframes, fast forwarding and volume control gestures, gestures for zooming in and out of a video, on-screen kid lock and many more.

Unified Remote is a mobile application from Unified Intents for remote controlling programs on a user’s computer from their Smartphone. It uses Bluetooth or Wifi to remotely control your PC and comes preloaded. This application attempts to simplify the task of controlling many different programs from one app and includes support for 70+ applications such as Spotify, YouTube, VLC Media Player, and Windows Media Player.

It supports Windows, Linux, and Mac, and requires a server program to be installed. Using Unified Remote, you can remotely wake up your computer from sleep using its “Wake on LAN” feature. Its paid versions unlock a multitude of useful features including custom remotes and functions for Android wear.

LastPass is a password management service that stores encrypted passwords in private accounts. LastPass is standard with a web interface, but also includes plug-ins for many web browsers and apps for many smartphones. LastPass auto-fills web browser and app logins for you, and generates new, secure passwords instantly. It is intuitive and fast across numerous platforms.

You can log in with one password instead of remembering a dozen. One password is all you need with LastPass and your LastPass master password handles the rest. Store passwords and logins, create online shopping profiles, generate strong passwords, track personal information in photo & audio notes, and more.

LastPass recently made cross-platform syncing free to all users, so you can now sync your password vaults between your Android phone or tablet and other devices such as your PC, Mac, or iPhone.

Shazam app is created to identify music, movies, advertising, and television shows, based on a short sample played and using the microphone on the device. It uses a smartphone or computer’s built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of audio being played. It creates an acoustic fingerprint based on the sample and compares it against a central database for a match. If it finds a match, it sends information such as the artist, song title, and album back to the user.

Some implementations of Shazam incorporate relevant links to services such as iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or Groove Music. Shazam works by analyzing the captured sound and seeking a match based on an acoustic fingerprint in a database of more than 11 million songs.

Automate app lets you automate various tasks on your Smartphone or tablet. Create your automation with flowcharts, make your device automatically change settings like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Near field communication – NFC or perform actions like sending SMS, e-mail, based on your location, the time of day, or any other “event trigger”. You can automate almost everything on your device, Automate even supports plug-in made for Tasker and Locale.

Automate makes it easy for non-programmers to make cool stuff happen, for programmers to make cooler stuff and with a bit of understanding of the Android OS, it seems that the possibilities are all but endless. It is definitely one of the best apps for Android.

Credit Karma is a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include free tax preparation, monitoring of unclaimed property databases and a tool to identify and dispute credit report errors. All of Credit Karma’s services are free to consumers. Revenue from targeted advertisements for financial products offsets the costs of its free products and services. Credit Karma is paid by lenders for successful recommendations.

Credit Karma also provides credit tools, such as a Credit Score Simulator, which simulates the effect of potential financial actions on a user’s credit score; and tailored financial recommendations based on each individual user’s credit profile. It’s one of the more underrated free Android apps.

Imgur and Giphy are two image databases. They’re great places to find things like funny GIFs, fun images, little facts, and all kinds of other entertainment purposes.

Imgur is the easiest way to discover spicy memes, pets in sweaters, awe-inspiring science facts, video game Easter eggs, and all the rest of the Internet’s most entertaining stuff. Your phone is about to get a whole lot funnier. The world’s largest library of animated GIFs, now on your mobile phone! GIPHY for Android is the fastest, simplest way to search and share GIFs across all of your favorite social channels such an iMessage, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, & more!

Both Giphy and Imgur are completely free to download and use. They have your back whether you want to kill a few minutes slacking off or looking for the perfect reaction GIF for that Twitter or Google+ post. They’re two free Android apps worth having.

Quik is a video editor app by GoPro. You can create awesome videos with just a few taps. Choose your favorite photos and video clips then let Quik work its magic. In seconds, it finds great moments, adds beautiful transitions and effects, and syncs everything to the beat of the music. You can customize your story with text, music and more than easily share it with friends. Editing has never been this fast or this fun.

The way it works is the app will take video that you’ve captured and then string it together in a sort of video collage. You’ll have complete control over how long those clips are, where to make cuts, and there are some effects and additional stuff you can add on top to add a little flair.

If you want to maximize productivity, you need a to-do app. Offloading task management from your brain lets you focus your mental energy on what’s important: the task you’re working on. But finding a to-do app that fits your style can be tough. TickTick is the app that satisfies or comforts the requirements of the users and surely, this app will never make you look back.

TickTick is a simple and effective to-do list and task manager app which helps you make a schedule, manage time, remind about deadlines and organize life at work, home and everywhere else. TickTick is here to help you make the most of your day and get things done. Whether there is an idea you want to capture, personal goals to achieve, a work to accomplish, or make a collaboration with other colleagues, even to create a shopping list.

There is a pro version, but it adds things like calendar support and other additional features. The free version of this is far from what most other to do list apps offer. It’s also clean, easy to use, and it’s great for small teams or family use.

IFTTT is the freeway to get all your apps and devices talking to each other. Not everything on the internet plays nice, so this app is on a mission to build a more connected world. If This Then That, also known as IFTTT, is a free web-based service to create chains of simple conditional statements, called applets. An applet is triggered by changes that occur within other web services.

In addition to the pre-built applets, Users can also build custom tasks from these applets and services, combining multiple tasks and triggers in an “If This, Then That” structure. IFTTT renamed their original application to IF and released a new suite of apps called Do which lets users create shortcut applications and actions. Over 400 apps work with IFTTT including Twitter, Telegram, Google Drive, Twitch, Weather Underground, Instagram, Gmail, and devices like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Nest, Philips Hue, and your Android.

Discord is the only cross-platform voice and text chat app designed specifically for gamers. With the Discord Android app, you can stay connected to all your Discord voice and text chat channels even while AFK. It is perfect for chatting with team members, seeing who is playing online, and catching up on text conversations you may have missed.

The application allows it to be multi-platform and run on personal computers and the web. The software is supported by eleven data centers scattered around the world to keep latency with clients low. All versions of the client support the same feature set. The Discord application for personal computers is specifically designed for use while gaming, as it includes features such as low-latency, free voice chat servers for users and a dedicated server infrastructure.

Users can engage in voice chat or send text and photo messages plus invite links to servers for their contacts. While the service is free, Discord also features a premium Nitro subscription for $4.99 a month that offers features like animated avatars, custom emoji and expanded upload limits for photos and files.

What were your favorite apps of the year? Do you agree with our choices, or do you have some favorites of your own? Let us know in the comments below!